Julian's 2024 Solar Panel Comparison

While panels are an important component of your solar system, it would be a disservice to overemphasize panel decision. Higher watt panels are going to produce more power but does not necessarily mean higher quality or reliability. In fact, all tier 1 panels are going to have extremely low rates of failure.

If you want the best of the best, I would recommend REC or Panasonic, followed by QCELLS.  These panels are made to have the least degradation stated and their performance warranties and are more efficient than the rest of the tier 1 panels. REC and Panasonic offer 92% performance guarantees at year 25.

QCELLS is my preferred panel manufacturer for someone who wants more bang for their buck in terms of power production now. QCELLS is a German company that is owned by Hanwah and they are some of the true innovators in the photovoltaic manufacturing sector. QCELLS does not offer a labor warranty with their product so you can save money upfront. Once again, I always emphasize that the chances you will even need to exercise the panel warranty is almost none.

Solaria and Mission also make fantastic products. I have never seen even one panel amongst any brand listed fail in my three years of installing solar. There are also other great brands, but these are Julian’s recommendations.

What about SunPower? I did not mention SunPower even though they have the most impressive efficiency on paper. The reason why is I don’t like how SunPower products are not compatible with anything other than SunPower products. This limits the owner’s flexibility to do what they want with their system. Almost all other brands are compatible with each other so if you wanted to add panels to your system in the future, you could choose whatever product makes the most sense for you at that time. SunPower also does not offer monitoring of the system at the panel level as standard and you need to personally be the squeaky wheel if you want them to give you access to monitor at the individual panel level.. As the owner of an expensive energy producing system, it makes sense to me that you would want full view access of exactly how it’s performing.